


Mirrors

by puszysty



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puszysty/pseuds/puszysty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Times Louis Hoshi Felt Guilty For Cheating Death and One Time He Didn't</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirrors

1\. Louis could tell he'd really gone down hard when he looked at himself the mirror. The cut was still visible, and about a third of his forehead was black and blue. It would probably scar if he wasn't careful to clean it and apply the ointment sickbay gave him. He wasn't sure if he wanted the reminder or not. Were you supposed to be glad you survived the apocalypse?

Louis ran a wet cloth over the wound. It stung a bit, though not as much as he suspected the ointment would. A drop of fresh blood oozed out as he cleared the dried stuff away. Louis applied some pressure to it with a paper towel, which seemed to do the trick. He looked at the ointment again. After contemplating a moment, Louis opened the cap. He’d have enough reminders that he’d lived when everyone else had died. He didn’t need one every time he looked at a mirror.

 

2\. He’d put on weight. Not enough for him to get yelled at by his superiors, but enough for him to notice. He’d gotten lazy over the last year- not keeping up with his workout regimen, making frequent trips to the New Caprican produce market, even indulging in the occasional dessert now that he had access to the ingredients. No more, he decided right then and there. He didn’t like what he saw in the mirror.

Truth was, Louis was ashamed of himself. Not because Admiral Cain would’ve had his tags for it, which she definitely would have. He was ashamed because he was up here living in comfort while all those people were left down on the surface of New Caprica. He’d gotten chubby, and they’d gotten a cylon invasion. Louis thought of all the people back there- the Pegasus crew, the market vendors, Felix Gaeta- the cute former officer Dee had introduced him to, whom Louis had intended to ask out on a date the next time he went down. Once again, Louis had managed to cheat death. Once again, he didn’t know if he should feel lucky.

Louis poked at his gut again in the mirror. He was going to head to the gym as soon as his shift was over. He owed it to the people down there to at least be at his best form again. And that started with getting in shape.

 

3\. Louis was attempting to shave, but it wasn’t going successfully. He kept getting distracted by the man behind him. He shouldn’t have been staring- he knew better than to stare at anyone who had come back from New Caprica. But Louis couldn’t help it. Felix Gaeta was covered in bruises. Fresh ones, too fresh to have been from New Caprica. Felix looked like he’d been manhandled.

Louis debated whether he should say something. He sincerely doubted Felix would want to talk about it. Really the only people who were talking about New Caprica were Kara Thrace and Colonel Tigh, who mostly just angrily spat it out at people they knew had stayed on Galactica. Louis hadn’t heard much of it. No one on the ship really knew him. The Pegasus people would have given him hell, but most of them hadn’t come back. The cylons hadn’t even attempted to play nice with anyone from Pegasus, so he’d been told. If the cylons had gotten a mere whiff of Cain’s reputation, Louis believed it.

Whoever had gotten their hands on Felix hadn’t played nice either. If Louis had to guess, some scuffle from New Caprica managed to continue up here. But Louis wasn’t about to join in and start pointing fingers. It was only happenstance that he had gone the last four months unscathed and everyone else had spent those four months needing to make hard choices for the sake of their survival. Louis decided to give up on trying to shave, and went to talk to Felix.

. 

4\. He looked like shit. Louis hadn’t even been aware of how bad he looked until he saw himself in the mirror. The bags under his eyes betrayed his lack of sleep for the last three days, his bloodshot eyes hinting at the tears he had shed in private. He was pale from worry, and his hair and five o’clock shadow showed just how much he’d neglected himself. 

He should’ve cared, given that he had to work in the CIC like this. An earlier him would have cared. But he didn’t. There were more important things that mattered now. Felix’s leg was gone. Louis had spent every minute that he wasn’t on duty down in sickbay by Felix’s side. After three days, Felix still hadn’t acknowledged him. He just kept singing. 

Louis slammed his fist down on the sink. Why couldn’t it have been him on that mission? Why couldn’t he be the one to get shot? Why did it have to be Felix? Why?

Louis cursed the gods for taking more than just Felix’s leg that day. Louis then splashed some water on his face and went back to sickbay.

 

5\. Normally the mirror in the head would be full of reflections at this time, right before shift change. Now there were only a few faces to be seen. Louis’s was one of them. He wished it wasn’t. _You have a bright future, Louis. Keep your head down_. Bright future, his ass. His few remaining Pegasus friends were in jail on the Astral Queen, and Felix was dead.

Tigh had told him that he’d gotten lucky, not being involved in the mutiny one way or the other. Louis was really frakking sick of getting lucky. The people he cared about always seemed to end up either soulless or dead whenever Louis got “lucky.” Now he was left with no one but his own reflection.

Louis was angry. Not at Felix, not at Adama, but at his own reflection. He didn’t want to see it anymore. The sight of his own existence was too much a reminder of it all. Louis’s fist connected with the mirror, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Even broken, the mirror still showed his reflection. Louis broke down and sobbed.

 

6\. The river was calm today, the water lazily floating along downstream. If the sun was just right, Louis could see his own reflection in it. It was days like these that made his new home worth it. Somehow when the world was at peace, Louis could feel at peace too.

Louis sat down next to the river. He picked up a stone and tossed it, watching it skip across the surface. He picked up another, then skipped that one as well. In the ripples of the water, Louis swore that he could almost see Felix’s reflection beside him, smiling and laughing in the sunlight.

Louis stopped skipping stones, and Felix’s face disappeared as the water returned to its calm stasis. Yet Louis still felt his presence. He really had been lucky, he realized. Sure, the last four years had been filled with a lot of grief. But if Louis hadn’t survived that day on the Pegasus, he would’ve never met Felix. And all those moments he’d had Felix next to him, he wouldn’t trade for the world. It might not have been long enough, but for all the time he did have, Louis knew he couldn’t have been luckier.


End file.
